Posts Tagged: MCDM

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UW alum and Information School Guest Faculty Greg Hay has released a short-documentary on Community for Youth, a local nonprofit that provides mentors for inner-city kids facing significant challenges. It’s an inspiring video and includes a few comments from former UW men’s basketball star Nate Robinson.

Community for Youth has a presence in three Seattle high schools—Rainier Beach, Cleveland and Chief Sealth—and celebrates its students that progress to the University of Washington. Recent Community for Youth and UW graduates include Biniyam Berhe and Vanny Chham (both UW ’07), while Samuel Martin, Marcell Buckner and Jonathan Amosa are current UW students pursuing degrees.

“Non-profits have been hit pretty hard in the past few years with the economic downturn and that includes Community for Youth,” Hay says. “I hope to raise awareness of this organization, as it has helped many troubled kids find success. My goal is to get 10,000 people to view the short-documentary before the end of January.”

Take a look, you’ll love it. And enjoy this week’s Dawg Treats:

Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large writes about the late Sam Kelly’s new autobiography, written with UW history professor Quintard Taylor. Dr. Kelly was the UW’s first vice president for minority affairs.

A survey by UW Associate Professor of Social Work Taryn Lindhorst shows that women who have left their abusive husbands and fled with their children to the U.S., half the time our court system sends the children back, usually to their fathers.

UW alum Norm Rice was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Council for Community Solutions, which will look at the best ways citizens, nonprofits, businesses and government can work together to solve specific community needs.

The University of Washington makes it possible for those wanting to complete the undergraduate degrees they started. UW Professional & Continuing Education is celebrating 20 years of the Evening Degree Program. More than 2,000 students have graduated from the program, and nearly half did so between the ages of 26 and 35. Some returned to school decades after starting and then suspending their studies.

And for professionals wondering how to fit grad school into their busy lives, the UW recently hosted a panel discussion featuring three professionals who earned graduate degrees while working full-time: Cyndy Clegg, assistant director of Ambulatory Pharmacy Services at Harborview Medical Center, earned an Executive Master of Health Administration in 2007; Jeremy Snook, senior business development & strategy manager for Microsoft Game Studios, completed a Master of Communication in Digital Media in 2009; and Kelli Bixby Bays, a construction project manager for REI, is a graduate of the Master of Science in Construction Management.

These alumni successfully went back to school while continunig to work their day jobs. That’s a hallmark of UW Professional & Continuing Education, which offers more than 125 certificate programs, dozens of graduate and undergraduate degrees and hundreds of courses—in the evening, on weekends and online.

Alison Koop of PCE says, “What I found most inspiring: each grad rediscovered a hunger for learning. They called the experience ’empowering.’ It was a very satisfying experience, returning to school as an adult. And to their surprise, they found their professional skills (giving presentations, writing business proposals, etc.) really put them ahead in school. So, yes, you can teach an old Dawg new tricks! Even while he keeps his day job.”

Here are this week’s Dawg Treats:

After jumping 375 percent over the last 20 years, a report by the UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations (IMHE) shows that global health funding slowed to just 6 percent.

The UW’s Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) hosted a rapid response public conversation on the Wikileaks debate. This is being called a defining moment for the Internet. Read an extensive post on the subject by Adjunct Professor Ken Rufo.

Matthew Nienow, a 2010 UW graduate, was selected from over 1,000 applicants as one of this year’s Creative Writing Fellows from the National Endowment for the Arts. The prize is worth $25,000.

On Sunday, Nov. 14, the UW College of Arts & Sciences hosted Passport to Picasso, an exclusive showing of the Seattle Art Museum’s amazing new Picasso exhibit. I attended this event with my family and was moved by the paintings, sculptures, photography and imagination of the 20th century’s most iconic and influential artist.

I’d never been to the SAM before, so I was looking forward to it for several reasons. How often do you get to experience an exhibit like this in a community setting? The entire allottment of 1,200 tickets sold out and the museum was bustling with UW alumni and friends, but it never felt crowded. Drinks and cookies were served, and we had an hour to explore the rest of the museum before punching our passport to Picasso.

The exhibit featured hundreds of pieces from Picasso’s personal collection. It spanned eight decades of Picasso’s extraordinary life, highlighting a variety of mediums and the Cubist movement he helped create. It was a remarkable collection and worth every second of my time. Events like this make our community proud. Kudos to Arts & Sciences, the UW Alumni Association and Seattle Art Museum for a stellar partnership.

On to this week’s Dawg Treats:

On the heels of President Obama’s speech at the UW, the Boston Globe ranks John F. Kennedy’s top 10 presidential speeches and his 1961 address at the UW makes the list at No. 8.

Rear Adm. Eleanor Valentin, commander of the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Navy Medicine Support Command (NMSC) and director of the Navy’s Medical Service Corps (MSC), took top honors at the national Women of Color (WOC) awards ceremony. She is a 1975 UW graduate.

The Department of Communication inducted six alumni into its Hall of Fame on Thursday, Oct. 21. Among them was our very own E.M. “Eddie” Pasatiempo, the current Past-President of the UW Alumni Association.

Eddie is a business leader and executive who has enjoyed much success in the technology and professional services. He is an optimist in every sense of the word and one of the most inspirational people I and many others have met at the University of Washington. During his induction speech, Eddie told the crowd, “Thank you to all of you who have touched me, because I am a mosaic of all of you.” Now that’s classy.

Congratulations to Eddie. Read the full story and enjoy this week’s Dawg Treats:

UW Professor Marilyn Roberts says in this KING 5-TV report that germs on cell phones aren’t the problem, but germs on hands can be.

There is a lot happening at UWTV right now. Sept. 29 marked the debut of Media Space, a monthly series bringing the hottest issues of the digital age into focus. The show airs monthly on UWTV (channel 27) and you can watch the entire 30-minute debut above or visit the Media Space site on UWTV.org for more information.

Hosted by Hanson Hosein, an award-winning former TV news journalist and director of the Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM), the program’s first guest was Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network and the mind behind the hilarious LOL Cats and FAIL Blog. They discussed the physchology behind user-generated content and humor, as well as the social impact of such websites.

Said Huh, “In order for things to go viral you need a surprise and a shock factor. It is very difficult for you to be new, to be fresh and unexpected over and over again. So, instead, what we focus on is quality content on a daily basis. If you come to the site and you enjoy it, you will come back again.”

Bright and early on Monday, Sept. 20, the UW was changing the world—again.

The UW’s Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) hosted a satellite event at Kane Hall for The Gates Foundation’s breakthrough TEDxChange: The Future We Make, a worldwide forum designed to generate discussion and review the eight Millennium Development Goals set by the UN in 2000. It also assessed how close we are as a global community to achieving the goals by the 2015 deadline.

The main event was held in New York City and featured Gates Foundation co-chair Melinda Gates as the keynote speaker. A live feed broadcast the event to the world and more than 70 locations from Singapore to Sao Paulo hosted satellite events—the UW’s being the largest of them all. Watch the webcast here.

I have been to a couple of TEDx events this past year and both have slapped me silly with feelings of deep empowerment—to make change, to go further, to ask the tough questions. These are quickly replacing concerts and Husky games as my favorite events. There is something absolutely magical about them, and the UW was a gracious host for this special event. Attendees arrived early for a networking breakfast and were treated to a warm introduction from UW alum Bill Gates Sr.

On Friday, April 16 the UW’s Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) hosted TEDxSeattle, a regional TED event focusing on “Convening Community Through Social Technology.” I had the privaledge of going and it was, simply put, one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had.

TED talks are billed as the “talk of your life” and are limited to just 14 minutes. Above is Eugene Cho, founder of One Day’s Wages, a local non-profit that raises awareness and promotes simple giving in the fight against global poverty. His talk was amazing, and you can watch it here.

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